Category Archives: Permanent Change

Route 01234 Wayne’s Choice is reinstated with new routing on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail in place of the closed bridge on Fish Hatchery Rd.

Longing for warm dry weather? Try the new Death Valley routes (be careful what you wish for!). Both start in Furnace Creek 180 ft below sea level:

• 04387 Dante’s Palette – Death Valley, 120 km, 8000 ft climbing, 5500 ft peak elevation.
• 04390 Black Mountains Loop – Death Valley, 218 km, 8200 ft climbing, 3300 ft peak elevation.

Closures

Middle Fork Rd is closed due to a slide. No other information is available at present.

The usual roads are flooded in the Duvall-Carnation-Fall City area. https://gismaps.kingcounty.gov/mycommute/

The Carbon River permanents (2144 MI-Carbon River and 2100 Sumner-Carbon River) are reinstated. The road is closed about 100 yards before the old turnaround point, so even with slight shortening both still qualify as 200 and 100 km routes, respectively. Access is not permitted beyond the closure. The Park Service is exploring building a temporary trail on the adjacent private land. Long-term the Park Service intends to rebuild the road to reopen access to the trails.

Note the snow in the photo! A person might not expect snow at 1800 feet. In winter it pays to check snow conditions for the higher-elevation lowland routes. The Carbon River Rd has a couple of bridges that were entirely iced over on the 15th.

04291 Basin’s Edge, 202 km, was created from the popular Basin’s Edge 200k brevet.

Suspended Routes

02100 Sumner-Carbon River and 02214 Mercer Island-Carbon River have been suspended due to flood damage on the Carbon River entrance road.

01234 Wayne’s Choice has been suspended due to permanent removal of a small bridge on Fish Hatchery Rd. Alternative routings are being considered.

Two new routes were recently added:

04283 Seattle Lakes & Rivers Cruise, 117 km. Mike McHale designed this route. From Factoria it loops through Issaquah out to Carnation, then through Redmond and across the 520 bridge to Seattle, then south through Renton and back to Factoria. The controls offer convenient starting locations for many Seattle and Eastside riders.

04272 Phat Ferry, 100 km. Robert Hendry designed this route. Its 4500 ft of climbing should burn off the calories you consume at the four bakeries along this route as you ride from Bainbridge to Bremerton and back.

In the Almost a New Route department:

01002 Wenatchee-White River, 208 km. Formerly named E Wenatchee-Lake Wenatchee, this is a major reworking of the route to avoid riding on US-2 as much as possible. From Wenatchee the route climbs to Plain, visits Lake Wenatchee State Park for a view of the lake, cruises up to the end of the pavement on White River Rd, and returns through Plain and Leavenworth to Wenatchee.

Two routes have been reactivated since the last post:

00536 Hood Canal Loop, 208 km. This was formerly known as Hood Canal Loop 2.0. Only the northbound direction is recommended since this places the rider in the most visible position on curves around the numerous small headlands on US-101.

02100 Sumner-Carbon River, 102 km.

New Routes

04207 Leavenworth-White River, 113 km, goes from Leavenworth through Plain to Lake Wenatchee then to the end of the pavement on the White River Rd and back to Leavenworth.

Seattle to Crater Lake Permanents Tour

The Crater Lake 1200 route was used as a template to create a chain of 100-200 km permanents from Seattle to Klamath Falls. The start was moved to Seattle’s King St Station to facilitate returning to Seattle via Amtrak. Two options are provided for the final day; the longer circles Crater Lake before descending to Klamath Falls while the shorter follows the Craters 1200 route. You can read more about the routes here. The tour routes are also linked on the SIR RwGPS Club Library home page. A big thanks to Crista Borras, who reviews new routes at RUSA, for checking 1300 kms of routes!

Robert Hendry designed a new route, 04176 PTQ-Pretty Flat for this Side, 100 km. Flat Earth Randonneurs will be disappointed to learn the route is in Jefferson County, which is mostly unflat.

By popular demand (well actually one person asked for it), the canceled Summer 400 km brevet from Issaquah to Yakima Valley & back was turned into a permanent, 04180 Wet Side-Dry Side, 403 km. About half of this route is on the gravel Snoqualmie Valley and Palouse to Cascades Trails. Intermediate controls on the brevet were removed to allow one to free-route on even more gravel on the PTC east of Cle Elum.